Hands on: Writer’s tools

Back in September 2008, we mentioned that a new beta version of Openoffice.org was available for download. The release version 3.0 is now available, and like previous versions it’s free. As we mentioned at the time, there are many enhancements, not least of which is the ability to open and save Microsoft Office 2007 files.

Also recently updated – and free – is Dmitri Popov’s Writer’s Tools version 1.1.7. Installing it is something of a fiddle, but worth the effort. Download the zip file and extract the contents to a folder. Start Openoffice, and from the Tools menu run the Extension Manager. Click the Add button (in previous versions you need to select ‘My Extensions’ first) and navigate to the folder containing the extracted files. Select ‘WriterTools.oxt’ and click Open. You can also add the WriterTemplates.oxt, should you wish. To use these features you’ll need to register the WriterDB database as an Openoffice.org data source. Go to Tools, Options, expand the Openoffice.org Base branch, select Databases and click New.

Browse to the WriterDB.obd file that comes with the Writer’s Tools package and OK out of both dialogues.Close and restart Openoffice, and when you start Writer, you’ll see a new menu for Writer’s Tools. To use some of the tools, such as Lookup, you’ll need to provide the path to your default web browser the first time you use them. Having done this you’ll find you can highlight a word or phrase, click Lookup and have a choice of nine sources, ranging from Wikipedia to a dictionary of confusing words. Other built-in lookup tools include translating words or phrases into other languages via Google Translate, and finding a place on Google maps.

The next section has a variety of options for backing up, including Amazon Simple Storage Service (Linux only), a remote FTP site or a Gmail address. There’s also a multiformat backup tool that creates a zip file in the current folder with versions of the document in text, RTF and Doc format.

A Quick Converter lets you calculate feet to metres and Celsius to Fahrenheit, and there’s a rather bizarre word of the day feature. There’s also a timer, should you want to monitor your performance, or perhaps log editing time for billing, and a rather fine visual word count that shows a progress bar as you struggle towards your target. A Notebook tool lets you add snippets of text to a database, rather like a multiple clipboard.

The bookmarks feature, to put it mildly, is confusing. Ambiguity is a frequent hazard in open-source projects, and this is not the same as the in-document bookmarks found in the Insert menu. There’s also another different add-on called Bookmarks for adding commands to menus. What Bookmarks seems to do is add shortcuts to other documents to a list independent of the text. Finally, there’s a link to Lulu.com, where you can buy a printed manual for Openoffice Writer for £9.85.

More bookmarks
Getting back to the conventional use of the word ‘bookmarks’ in word processing, last month we looked at the basics of Word’s bookmarks feature and promised you some more ambitious tricks. Starting off with something simple, let’s say you’ve created a letter template with a heading, automatic date insertion and other conveniences. To round things off, you’d like the template to open at the salutation, so you can immediately start typing after ‘Dear’ without having to move the insertion point. This is easily done. Open the template, insert a bookmark where you want to start typing and give it a name, such as ‘starthere’. Now create a new Autonew macro as follows:

Sub Autonew()
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("starthere").Select
End Sub

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